Hiring in Guinea: the work permit, the contract and a salary worked through, step by step

Move someone who is already in Guinea

A foreign national's contract carries the public employment service's visa, so a new employer's contract needs its own. For a national of a country outside ECOWAS, the new hire also needs the service's prior authorisation.

Hiring a Guinean national needs no prior formality: no declaration, authorisation or visa before the hire. Their move turns on the notice they give: three months for managers, two for supervisors and foremen, and a month for other staff.

Check the role is open to a non-Guinean

Guinea's Code du travail recognises the right to work for everyone. It sets particular rules for hiring foreign workers, with the detail in a special regulation and an order of the employment minister.

A national of an ECOWAS member state needs no prior authorisation, but their contract still carries the public employment service's visa. A national of any other country needs both. The authorisation application includes an Africanisation plan for the role.

Set the contract up right

A contract of employment can take any form the two sides choose. A written one is free of stamp duty. Wherever it is signed, a contract performed in Guinea follows the Code du travail. A contract that is not a fixed term, an apprenticeship, a trial contract or an internship is open-ended.

A trial period is agreed in writing, or in a letter of hiring given within two days of the start that names it. It lasts up to three months for managers and a month for everyone else, renewal included. On a fixed term, it runs to a day for each week of the contract and no more than a month, or 15 days where the term is not fixed in advance.

A fixed term is written, or set out in a letter of hiring, before work starts. It runs for up to two years, renewals included, and the same two sides make no more than two fixed terms within a year. Otherwise the contract is open-ended. A contract for a season, a replacement or a passing rise in work, whose end is not fixed in advance, can be renewed any number of times, within two years in all. At its expiry, the employee is owed an indemnity of 5% of all the pay earned under it.

A clause barring the employee from competing after the contract ends applies only where the employee ends it or commits gross misconduct. It covers no more than a year and 30 kilometres.

Pay is in legal tender, at least every 30 days for monthly staff. Each payment comes with a payslip. Only the salary tax and the CNSS come off pay by law. No more than 30% of pay can be seized or assigned. A medical examination takes place before the trial period ends, and then once a year.

The usual week is 40 hours of actual work. An hour beyond 40 in a week, or beyond eight in a day, is overtime. The employer can require up to 100 hours of overtime a calendar year, and needs the labour inspector's authorisation for more. With overtime, the day runs to no more than ten hours of work and the week to 48. Overtime is paid at 30% more for the first four hours and 60% more after them. Night work, between 21:00 and 05:00, is paid at 20% more. In a business that cannot stop work, work on a public holiday is paid on top of the day's pay, at 60% more by day and 100% more at night.

Know the employee test before you engage a contractor

Guinea's Code du travail treats as an employee anyone who has undertaken, for pay, to put their professional activity under the direction and authority of another person, whatever their sex, religion, nationality or origin.

A contract of employment is one by which a person puts their professional activity at another's disposal, under that person's authority, for pay. A contract performed in Guinea follows the Code wherever it was signed.

A role that needs a work permit goes through employer of record.

Work out what a salary costs you and what the employee takes home

Take an employee on GNF 10,000,000 a month.

The CNSS counts monthly pay between GNF 550,000 and GNF 2,500,000, so this salary is counted at the ceiling. The employee pays 5% of it, and you pay 18%.

The salary tax is worked out after the employee's CNSS comes off, on GNF 9,875,000 here. The bands take nothing on the first GNF 1,000,000, 5% of the next GNF 2,000,000, 8% of the next GNF 2,000,000 and 10% of the rest, GNF 747,500 in all. The tax withheld is paid within the first ten days of the next month.

The flat tax on salaries is 6% of pay once the CNSS family benefit contribution of GNF 150,000 comes off, so of GNF 9,850,000 here.

A training levy comes on top. The Code du travail sets a contribution to vocational training of 1.5% of the wage bill, GNF 150,000 on this salary. A business of fewer than 30 employees that does not pay it owes the apprenticeship tax of 2% instead.

Housing, transport, meal and cost-of-living allowances are free of the salary tax, up to 25% of gross salary in all. The CNSS is paid within 15 days of the month's end by an employer of 20 or more staff. A smaller employer pays by the quarter, or by the month if it asks to. A late payment adds 5% for each month or part of a month.

Know the leave your people are entitled to

End employment on the law's terms

A fixed term ends at its expiry, with the indemnity of 5% and a work certificate. Before then, it ends only by written agreement, for gross misconduct or for force majeure. An employer who ends it early otherwise owes damages of at least the pay up to the end of the term.

An open-ended contract ends by dismissal only for a reason that can be checked objectively. The reason can lie in the employee, such as ill health that leaves them permanently unfit, their capacity, their performance or their conduct, or in the business, such as a restructuring or a fall in activity. Loss of trust is not a reason in itself. A termination by agreement holds only where it is signed in writing before the labour inspector.

Before a dismissal for a personal reason, the employer calls the employee to a meeting by a letter that reaches them at least five days ahead. The letter gives the reasons and says the employee can bring a colleague or a union representative. The meeting is minuted, and no decision is made at it. The employer waits two working days, and the dismissal letter, giving its reasons, goes no earlier than the third day after the meeting. For serious misconduct, the employer can suspend the employee pending the decision, without pay for no more than ten working days.

An economic dismissal is put to the union delegates. They receive the file seven days before the first meeting, and the labour inspector receives it at the same time. A second meeting follows at least seven days later, and the final plan goes to the inspector. Where ten or more employees are involved, the inspector can call a third meeting, and no dismissal is made within ten days of the inspector receiving the plan.

Notice runs from the written notification: three months for managers, two for supervisors and foremen, and a month for other staff. During it, the employee has eight hours a week to look for work. Gross misconduct ends the contract without notice.

Severance is owed after 12 months' actual work under the contract, except on a dismissal for gross misconduct. An order of the labour minister sets how it is worked out.

A claim against the reason for a dismissal is brought within 24 months of its notification. Where the employer cannot prove a reason, the court orders at least six months' salary, on the last full month's gross pay. Where the procedure was not followed, it orders three months' salary on top.

During maternity leave and the unpaid leave after it, an employee can be dismissed only for gross misconduct unrelated to the pregnancy, or where the contract cannot be kept for a reason that has nothing to do with it. She can leave without notice while pregnant and until the end of the ninth month after the birth.

A work certificate is owed when employment ends. A receipt in full and final settlement can be challenged in writing within three months of signing it.

See what changed this year, and what is next

No change to the salary tax scale took effect in the last twelve months. None is scheduled in a published text.